About the Role
Collier.Simon is hiring an Account Director to serve as the agency's primary presence on a major automotive dealership account. This person moves fast, builds trust from the corporate level down to the store, and ensures creative work actually lands where it matters. This role sits within an inter-agency team supporting a high-volume account and reports directly to the agency President.
The work spans both strategy and execution. This person shapes creative strategy and then drives it through to delivery; translating business direction into market-specific plans, codifying briefs, directing the internal creative team, and partnering with dealership marketing directors and GMs to keep cluster and store-level workstreams moving, and making sure the field always has what it needs. They build their own decks, run their own projects, communicate clearly, handle volume, and solve problems at the speed retail demands without passing the chaos on to the team.
The right candidate earns trust by showing up prepared, responding fast, and delivering on what they promise. Marketing directors and GMs should come to see them not as an agency contact, but as a retail partner who understands their business.
Core Responsibilities
1. Set Strategy and Own Campaign Delivery
- Execute campaign strategy at the market and store level, translating brand direction into localized, actionable plans
- Own market-level and store-level workstreams end-to-end: scoping, briefing, timelines, creative review, and delivery—building your own client-ready decks and running the work directly in the team’s PM tools
- Coordinate across creative, production, and media to keep retail campaigns moving — and moving fast
- Build quick-turn materials, localized assets, and market-specific adaptations without heavy upstream support
- Manage a broad, concurrent portfolio—cluster campaigns, grand openings, partner sponsorships, and field activations—dividing the book with the Senior Account Director while keeping everything on time, on quality, and nothing slipping through the cracks
- Partner with the Creative Director to shape and codify the brief, then help steer the internal creative team toward strong, on-strategy work—setting direction proactively
2. Own Field Relationships and Drive Retail Execution
- Serve as the day-to-day resource for field account leads — the person they call when they need answers, assets, or air cover
- Arm field reps with the narratives, talking points, and materials they need to win GM buy-in
- Jump on calls, respond quickly, and solve problems at the speed the field moves
- Understand the challenges and opportunities across the dealership network well enough to translate them into actionable creative requests
3. Build Relationships with Marketing Directors & Key General Managers
- Own and grow relationships with marketing directors and priority GMs across assigned markets
- Earn trust through preparation, responsiveness, and follow-through — not just status updates
- Become the kind of partner they call before a problem becomes a problem
- Work to create client evangelists: contacts who actively advocate for the agency's work because they've experienced its value firsthand
What Success Looks Like
- Creative strategy is proactive and sharp. The Creative Team receives clear, well-grounded strategic direction that makes the work better
- Creative performance improves measurably over time because strategy, media, and creative are aligned and iterating together
- Field reps feel armed and supported. They have the narratives, materials, and creative confidence to win over GMs
- Priority marketing directors and GMs see the agency as a genuine strategic partner, not a production vendor
- Projects across the portfolio are well-managed, on time, and delivered with strategic intent, not just operational competence
- Client presentations land because they tell a story that connects creative to business outcomes
- The internal team feels grounded - client-side chaos gets absorbed and translated into clear direction, not relayed as noise
What We’re Looking For
Required
- 8+ years of experience in an advertising, marketing, or agency environment with a strong track record in account management, retail marketing, or field-level client support
- Hands-on retail automotive experience (Tier 2 / Tier 3, dealer or franchise networks), including fluency with store-level performance data—can read it and turn it into creative and media direction. This is non-negotiable, not a nice-to-have
- Genuinely self-sufficient and hands-on - manages a high volume of concurrent projects with operational discipline and consistent delivery, builds their own client-ready decks, and owns the details directly (comfortable running their own work in a PM tool)
- Strong relationship instincts — specifically with clients who are operationally focused, market-driven, and skeptical of agencies that move slowly
- Comfortable moving fast without sacrificing quality; knows when to escalate and when to just solve the problem
- Confident communicator who can build and deliver client-facing materials without heavy oversight
- Ability to translate campaign direction into market-specific execution plans and hold the line on quality without heavy oversight
- Creative-strategic range: can codify a brief, direct an internal creative team, and present the work confidently in creative reviews—not just manage the client relationship
- Steady under pressure: absorbs an unpredictable, high-volume client and brings order to the internal team rather than passing the churn along
- Fully remote, with availability to work core Pacific (or at least Mountain) hours
Strong Differentiators
- Background supporting distributed Tier 3 auto dealer networks
- Experience working within inter-agency or holding company team structures
- Familiarity with market-level or co-op marketing models
This role is built for someone who pairs creative conviction with hands-on execution, earns trust through preparation and presence, stays calm when the client doesn’t, and understands that great agency work starts with knowing what the client actually needs and having the strategic range to deliver it.
Benefits
Benefits including healthcare, 401K, vacation/PTO policy to be shared in greater detail during the interview process.
Collier.Simon provides equal employment opportunity to all individuals regardless of their race, color, creed, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by state, federal, or local law.
Attention Job Seekers: Please be wary of recruitment and hiring scams. Collier.Simon will never ask you to pay an application fee, equipment fee, or to provide any other type of banking information. If you have any concerns about whether the communications you’ve received are legitimate, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected].
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